Masterpiece
by KayFay
Summary: Dr. Wilson, lead doctor of the Lazarus Project. Why did he betray Cerberus?


**Okay, so I've always been kind of bothered by the lack of explanation for Wilson's destruction of the Cerberus facility where you wake up in ME2. No doubt he was on the payroll for someone equally as mysterious and nefarious as the Illusive Man, but I live by the phrase "What if?" so… here we go!**

* * *

The alarms are giving him a headache.

Of course it is his own damn fault, just like the bullet that shattered his femur, but it is a necessity. A sacrifice.

Gunshots ring out somewhere close by. Good, Jacob should be here soon. _She_ should be here soon. It really is regrettable that they keep running into mech patrols, but Wilson is a doctor, not a techie. He knows enough to hack a system, but not reprogram the drones. His replies to Jacob's angry complaints are harsh, snapping off his tongue, tainted by the pain.

The involuntary contraction of the semitendinosus drives all thoughts from his mind as pain screams through his entire body. The nerves of his legs seem to curl and wither, attempting to escape the shredded flesh. He teeth grind together with an eerie creaking. _A sacrifice. A sacrifice. _

The door to his left hisses open, startling him out of pain induced revere. She steps through the door, and can't help but remember.

* * *

_The station is in an uproar as they bring Shepard in. A sterile, glass and plastic cart races through the halls, bearing nothing more than bone chips, charred flesh, and the embodiment of humanity's hope. He is in the first of the med-facilities, watching the gurney's unhindered progress, preparing himself to tell the Illusive Man the worst. Shepard is no more than charcoal now; even humanity's greatest icon is useless once becoming a cadaver._

_His med-bay's doors swish open, the grotesque lump of twisted flesh slides under the scanner. Wilson taps his gloved fingers as he waits for the negative feedback from the machines. The first blip from the machine he dismisses as his imagination. He cannot deny the existence of the second. _

"_We have brain activity." Impossible, he scoffs to himself, even as he watches the machine pump out a series of numbers and calculations that cannot encompass the miracle before him. The body is dead, the mind is not. Suffocation, re-entering a planet's atmosphere in nothing but a hard suit, and extended exposure to sub-zero temperatures has not stopped this woman's mind from working. She's still there, even if her existence is so faint it is practically negligible._

_Wilson's body moves, lips speaking without prompting from his mind. "Ready Project Lazarus." He finally gets to see if his theory can become a reality._

* * *

_Miranda is angry, as per usual. "I told you to bring her back totally unchanged. __**Totally unchanged! **__Where does cosmetic surgery factor into that?!"_

_Wilson turns his back on the yelling woman; he tires of her never ending complaints. He's not working fast enough. Wait, now his pace is too reckless. He's not devoting himself to the program enough. Now he's gone too far; he shouldn't be working all day every day. And then there's the unchanged bit. Oh, God, how he's tired of hearing that. Of course Wilson doesn't know the woman Shepard, but he doesn't think that she would mind him taking a few small liberties with the sculpting of her body. Adding a delicate hollow at the base of her neck, crafting the sweet, inward curve of her jaw to be like a master calligrapher's stroke, raising her cheekbones that now fly like the sweet, haunting notes of a silver flute…_

_Wilson doesn't think himself a poetic man, but there is a visual poetry here, far more profound than lyrical cadences. He smiles as he strokes the delicate curve of her jaw, traces the spider-silk of her eyelids. His masterpiece._

* * *

_Miranda says he isn't normal. That the multitude of pictures of Shepard on his desk is unhealthy. Fifty different views of the skeleton, forty-eight of the _musculature, seventeen shots of from before the crash. What was the word Miranda used? Ah yes, _**Obsessive**__. A snort climbs up his throat. Of course he isn't normal! He's a genius scientist that played an integral part in the development of a project that can raise the dead. What part of that says "time for a healthy man-woman relationship?" Of course he's obsessed. Shepard has been his life for seventeen months and twenty-four days._

* * *

_He is bitter. Any idiot could hear that through the tense mutters of his personal audio logs. No, not bitter. Something more raw, more powerful. Infuriated._

_Miranda refuses to recognize his efforts. He has labored over the Commander; his very existence is defined by her expressionless face. And yet she repeatedly doesn't acknowledge his work, the very breakthroughs he has discovered that actually allow Shepard to breath without tubes. Yet he sees no money himself. He knows how much there is flying around; hell, the Illusive Man could wallpaper the entire facility with maxed-out credit chits. But Wilson sees none of it. He is trapped in this mulit-billion credit medical paradise, without the money to buy himself a new pair of shoes._

_So he rants and raves in his logs. He's underappreciated, poor, angry. But he knows the truth, even if he'll never speak it allowed. He'll never leave. Not until those sleeping eyes open._

* * *

_They are going to use her. Oh, he's always known this; it's Cerberus he's working for after all. There's always a hidden purpose. But he's overheard enough bits and pieces that he can begin to formulate what is in store for her. His personal project. His best work. His raison d'être. Collectors. What the hell is the Illusive Man thinking? Is he a fool? Is he really willing to risk two years of work and four billion credits? Is he willing to sacrifice her?_

_Wilson is not._

* * *

_The day she wakes is the most monumental event in all of Wilson's considerable life. The heart rate rises, Wilson turns to examine the machine's output. Suddenly, a harsh breathing fills the room. He whirls around, only to see the panic flood across the features that he has created as Shepard struggles to move. Part of his mind rejoices through the panic flooding his mind: her muscles have not atrophied._

_Miranda is yelling. He hurriedly measures out the tranquilizer, injects it into the IV feeding a continuous stream of nutrients into Shepard's bloodstream. Slowly her body flops back, eyelids softly flutter closed. His bones turn to gelatin as relief steals his breath. He flops against the machinery. He has won a great battle against the impossible foe; he has stolen Shepard back from death._

_Miranda straightens from her position next to the drugged woman's head. Spine locks, hair flips over the shoulder. "I must report this to the Illusive Man. Project Lazarus is practically complete." She leaves without another word._

_All of Wilson's pride vanishes in the face of laughing dread; his Shepard will soon be gone. She shall be in the hand of a manipulative genius, playing a lethal game she mistakes as a mission for the good of the universe. _

_The time has come._

* * *

Shepard speaks, and the lapse into memory ends as swiftly as it began. Her fingers softly prod the bullet hole, medi-gel at the ready. Ah, those hands. He spend days working on them. The twenty-seven bones in her right hand were shattered practically beyond repair, but he had refused to simply replace the bones with metal and silicones. No, instead he had spent hours at a time with a scalpel and tweezers, cutting apart the still-healing flesh and maneuvering each and every shard back into it's proper place. The hands that had killed so many, hands that had felt more pain than Wilson can imagine experiencing, hands that had saved the Citadel, are preserved. He is proud of those hands.

She helps him to his feet. Jacob with his insatiable conscious holds them back, tells Shepard of Cerberus. Of Project Lazarus. She crosses her arms, her eyes (eighty-seven days spent on making them functional) narrowing at each of them in turn. She declares her distrust. Relief sweeps through Wilson's lungs with his next breath of air. Good, trust is a terrible handicap. She must be strong.

He tells them of the escape shuttles, pushes them forward. Mech after mech falls under their fire and Wilson dares to hope. He never has, not when Shepard was first brought to him, not even when her heart first beat. Certainly not when her eyes opened. He allows himself the liberty now. Even the knowledge that Miranda is still alive does not deter this painfully joyful sensation welling between his ribs and spine; he is positive they can reach the shuttle long before her.

Soon his Shepard shall be free.

He enters a code. The door gasps it's way open. He finds himself staring at a gun, and the glacial blue eyes iced with betrayal behind it. Shit.

"Miranda, I thought you were…" The words trip themselves past his tongue before he can halt them. He does not want his last words to be for this bitch. He wants them to be for someone special, someone important. Shepard. _I could love you_. Or perhaps, simply _live_.

The shot echoes in cruel harmony with the last sound to reach him. "Dead?"

* * *

**Thank you for reading! I know it isn't perfectly accurate, but this is make-believe time! Review please! I hope you enjoyed! I hope I conveyed Wilson as an intelligent man, a man of science. Vocab lesson from the beginning of the piece: the semitendinosus is one of the hamstring muscles. **


End file.
